The Smiley Smile Message Board

Interesting to note that at this time his voice was almost a perfect mix of young Brian & post '76 Brian. The voice is deeper, but still pretty clean.

In certain parts you can hear the characteristics of his younger tone take over, but for the most part its apparent that he's leaning towards the big change.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=379l_T3MRpE

This is great, thanks so much for sharing!

Ditto.  I've never heard the whole thing before, just excerpts. 

Brian sounds like he's having a great time doesn't he? I was really surprised when he started talking about Murry, I almost expected him to start crying for a second when the topic was brought up.

This is cracking- nice one.

Are you still going to upload the Dennis @ Brother interview you mentioned?

Interestly, Brian mentions Capitol putting out Barbara Ann as a single without the BBs knowing. Wasn't it established recently that it actually had been Brian's decision to put it out?

It was Brian's decision? That's the first time I've heard about that possibility!

Perhaps you're thinking of Sloop John B being included on Pet Sounds?

He's very ambivalent about Surfin USA being back on the charts, isn't he?

They talk about 1963 and 64 as if it was a million years ago. It would be like someone talking about 2002 now.

Perhaps he was disappointed that their early work again went to the top of the charts. I feel that much of what got Brian depressed was how few people were interesting in his artistic outbursts. Pet Sounds failed by his reckoning, Smile was axed, Friends fried and Sunflower (his last major effort to do music with the group for 5 years) scrapped the bottom of the charts. No wonder he was thinking 'fuckem all'

He sounds exactly like he does in 1988

Interesting that Brian states that he and Mike did the lyrics to Surfin USA. Something Mike has stated himself of course.

This was actually 2 months before he did 'California Feelin', but he sounds like his 15 Big Ones self already, speaking-wise, with the same vocal inflections as his 80s self.  Was this before or after the Sydney interview? Asking, because if this was before then his voice could have been saved.

Great picture with this upload, by the way.

Makes me wonder- did Van Dyke Parks get f***ed up with the rest of them? You always hear of him being part of that famous gang of LA partiers, but somehow I can't imagine him getting DESTROYED. Should have asked him that when I met him ;)

he seemed more like the type  who would take drugs for transcendent experiences, as opposed to just getting f***ed up. plus the uppers. but again, those don't  really do any type of destroying except to your nervous system over long periods of use.

nobody can naturally look this happy:

(http://userserve-ak.last.fm/serve/_/33882277/Brian+Wilson+And+Van+Dyke+Parks+sm18.jpg)

When you hear these interviews with Brian during that period, don't you wish that you could go back in time and kidnap Brian - a la Landy - and take him to some retreat where he could've gotten help and avoided the year 1975 and everything that went with it. In my mind, I keep repeating the phrase "that was salvageable", whether it applies to Brian's voice, his mind, or the Beach Boys' career (artistically) at that time.

Yeah 1973-74  was the last time he could have been helped emerging unscathed as it were.

Yep. That one and a few others.

Btw, if anyone has any other 60's - early 70's BW interviews to contribute, let me know and I'll be glad to upload it.

Mike Eder - are you aware of any other audio interviews out there?

The only other clips I can find is the '68 car interview, & a short clip of Bruce, Danny Hutton & BW calling in to a radio station in England right around the time of the Surf's Up album release. Brian says all of one or two words, and the quality is absolutely terrible. Interesting nonetheless.

This is as close as humanly possible of a man looking like a giraffe.

There is an Aussie or UK interview with all of them in 1964 that I think has been booted.  The 3 Silver Platter Service interviews are out there from 64-67. Brian did do other interviews pre 1976, it's just a matter of tracking them down. That Jack Lloyd fellow mentioned doing an interview with Brian in the late sixties for a history of rock series. Maybe he still has the tape. He says in the book Brian was in a very good and talkitive mood.

Nah, he was scathed and needed help well before that.  In 1974 he still had his clear voice. If he laid off the coke, hash, and cigs immediately, he could have saved his voice, but mentally, he was still pretty messed up.  Then in 1975 his voice went South forever.....

This Pewter interview was circulating amongst collectors on cassette back in the mid 70's.  Same with the Fornatale interviews.  There's a newspaper article somewhere with a picure of Brian with Pewter at KRTH radio in L.A. Brian showed quite a bit of weight gain even then (August '74).

There's a few more Beach Boys interviews out there from the 70's. Three that I know of just with Dennis. KOME radio in San Jose and two at radio stations in Oregon promoting POB. One in Seattle with two Beach Boys - The Beach Boys interview in Phonograph magazine was hilarious!

Have you heard his vocals on the Disney album? Sublime.
His voice has been really good these past few years, far better than other 60s musicians that didn't even go through a quarter of the problems that Brian went through.

Wow. Does Jack Lloyd post here? Maybe I'll try to reach out to him. Would be awesome to find some previously unheard interviews from that period.

re: 3 Silver Platter Service interviews - I know of the Xmas one, the Hollywood Strings one.. which was the other? Is that the Smiley interview?

I think I have that UK '64 interview.


Wow. Anyone have a lead on this?

Of course.   Heard "Matchpoint Of Our Love" from '78?

You know Brian walked out of the Pewter interview when the subject of Heroes & Villains came up?  He did come back to resume the interview though.

Here's the text to the interview:

JP: Brian, let's talk about your first record; I believe that was in '62?
BW: Oh, I forgot we were doing an interview! I was looking at the picture over there.
JP: That's Groucho.
BW: Oh, hi Groucho.
JP: He's on a surfboard...
BW: I've forgotten what they look like....
JP: The first hit was "Surfin' ", back in '62. How did you decide to tie the whole surfing scene up into a song, how did that come about?
BW: My brother Dennis came home from school one day and said something about how surfing looked like it was going to become the next big craze, and we should write a song about it. You see at that time we were writing songs for friends and school assemblies. So it happened that we wrote a song about surfing due to Dennis' suggestion.
JP: I talked with you on the phone about a month ago and asked you to pick out some of your favorite hits from the past for me to bring along to the interview, and you mentioned a record by the Cadets. Was that "Stranded in the Jungle"?
BW: No, that's Kenny & the Cadets. I was Kenny and the other guys went by the name of the Cadets. This was back in '61 and at that time we were just getting going with a publisher and this guy had this great song, his name was Bruce Morgan, so my mother and I and a friend of mine did this demo... hey, this could get to be a long story!
JP: You were telling me earlier about the way you write songs. How you get down a pattern on the piano and lay down some rhythm tracks. When you went in to cut tunes like "Little Deuce Coupe", back in '63, was it all live or did you lay down a rhythm track first?
BW: Sometimes. It varied, depending on how lazy we were feeling. Like sometimes we had the music but no words. Let's use "Little Deuce Coupe" as an example. We'd do the background track for it in the chord pattern and then when we'd listen to it, we'd be listening and suddenly go Wow! I got an idea! I'm hearing these kinds of words. And all of a sudden we'd be in there writing words to that track. I mean, we'd have a feeling to work with and sometimes that was all.
JP: With the car songs like "Little Deuce Coupe" the lyrics were written by Roger Christian, and then there was a song that came out about a year later which has really become a classic: "Don't Worry Baby".
BW: Roger and I spent so many evenings sitting up. He was really kind of a guiding light for me. He'd get off at midnight, he did a night show from 9 to 12 on KRLA, then we'd go out and get a hot fudge sundae and we'd sit there for hours talking, writing lyrics and all of a sudden it was like I'd written 15 songs!
JP: Did Bill Haley's "Rock Around the Clock" affect you in any way?
BW: "Rock Around the Clock" shocked me, I mean I was so electrified by that experience. Some of my friends came over and said I had to hear this new record, so we went out and bought it and took it home and put it on. We were screaming, that song was really it.
JP: Brian, besides writing and producing all these tunes you developed a style of singing in a falsetto that has been your trademark through the years. How did you develop that style?
BW: There was a group called the Four Freshmen. I used to listen to their records all the time. I'd come home from school and lock myself in my room and listen to this group and I practiced the high parts. I wanted to see if I could get as high as he could so I practiced until my range went up. So I trained my voice to the point where it was easy for me to hit that falsetto.
JP: What instrument were you practicing with while you were developing this style?
BW: An organ and piano, usually those two, though actually I didn't use an instrument much at that time. I'd just sit there on a chair and sing along with the high part...
JP: You wrote the lyrics to "Surfin' USA" didn't you?
BW: Chuck Berry wrote that song. It was called "Sweet Little Sixteen". When we first got going Mike was sort of a Chuck Berry fan, so we took Chuck's song and turned the lyrics into a surfing song.
JP: Do you get a shock when someone mentions "Be True to Your School"? What kind of memory does that bring back?
BW: Oh that fries my brain! I mean, that brings back some heavy memories...
JP: The lyric about the cheerleader...
BW: Now that's one lyric that I wish everyone would pass on and just listen to the music.
JP: One of the tunes you picked out as an all time favorite was one by the Crystals, a song called "Uptown." That song was produced by Phil Spector. You were an admirer of his work, weren't you?
BW: Of the works I remember; it's hard to remember them all, but that was one of my favorites, along with "Be My Baby" and most of the Ronettes songs. One of my favorite Beach Boys records is "I Can Hear Music" which was by the Ronettes originally. That was Carl singing lead on that one, as a matter of fact he produced it too.
JP: You recorded "Help Me Rhonda" in '64 didn't you? . .
BW: Yes, in the middle part of that year. That's somewhat like a Phil Spector approach and it has the harmonica part like that record "Fannie Mae."
JP: Who was playing harmonica on that, do you remember?
BW: I don't remember. I think it was some musician we hired, not one of the guys. None of us could play harmonica.
JP: Regarding your earlier sides, did you have a favorite studio that you liked to use, or did you experiment with different studios around town?
BW: We went to at least ten of the studios around town. I preferred Western Recorders at 5000 Sunset Blvd. It seemed to have the best echo chamber for what we liked to do vocally. It had good balanced echo, a really fat echo. RCA had a good studio too, and Sunset Sound was great.
JP: When was the last time you were on a Honda, Brian?
BW: Let's see, well, ah, a few years ago when I crashed my Honda.
JP: Did you have a helmet on?
BW: Yeah, I didn't get hurt real bad. I ran into a palm tree and fell off the bike. I haven't gone riding since.
JP: Where did you grow up?
BW: In Hawthorne, about three miles from the beach. It was a little town and it didn't have any sidewalks until after we grew up. It was really weird, we'd mow the lawn and the lawn would taper down into the street.
JP: You were a close family, weren't you?
BW: Yeah, I guess we were. You know my father mixed all our early surfing records, he was like our producer in fact. Yeah, that's what he was. He'd produce our records though he really didn't get credit. He'd tell us to tighten up a bit, offer us discipline, and if we didn't do it he'd get really mad. It was almost like a pep talk: "Okay you guys, you're slacking off now, tighten up a bit" and sure enough we did.
JP: When the records started getting played and becoming hits, did that change your life in any way?
BW: The guys were in high school, hadn't even graduated yet, and we were on the national chart. Now that's quite a change for a kid! So that tightened things up for our family quite a bit. We realized that we now had a chance to go places so we had to tighten up. Our first record, "Surfin' " made it, and when "Surfin' USA" made it on the national charts everybody was kind of in shock, so we tightened up our attitude and just got more serious about music.
JP: The Beach Boys Party album was really the first thing of its kind, wasn't it?
BW: Yeah, I guess it was. We just got everybody together and had some fun. We had no idea Capitol was gonna put "Barbara Ann" out as a single. We thought they were crazy! We weren't even sure it was gonna be an album. We just invited everybody over and turned on the tape machine. Did you know that was Dean Torrence singing that high part on "Barbara Ann"? Yeah that was old Dean, we invited him over and sat him down in a chair and told him to sing, and he did. And we had all these girls come by, it was pretty hectic that night. And then Capitol pulled "Barbara Ann" off the album without telling us, completely snuck that one past us.
JP: I bet that surprised you.
BW: It shocked me. It did very well, and we didn't expect that to happen. I think that was November of '65 when they released that. We had potato chips and dip and other stuff around for the atmosphere. Box guitars, a stand up bass, and drums. Whew!
JP: Brian, what kind of dip do you like, do you like onion?
BW: I love onion. French dip, that’s the best. French onion dip or bleu cheese. Do you like Fritos or that kind of stuff?
JP: I don’t like dip with Fritos as much, I’d rather have a big potato chip with onion dip on it.
BW: I love that, God, I love that…

Either Steve Mayo or Bigass will probably have a scan of the article about the Pewter/Brian interview. Mine's stashed away someplace.

Hey seltaeb, where/when is that photo from the YouTube video from? Is that '74? He looks pretty big here.

What Brian actually said was, ` When we first got going Mike was sort of a Chuck Berry fan, so we took Chuck's song and he and I turned the lyrics into a surfing song.

Probably a good job for Brian`s team that Mike`s lawyers didn`t use this interview (to my knowledge) during the songwriting case.

I always thought that the lyrics to Surfin' USA, at least the list of surfing spots in Socal, were provided to Brian by Jimmy Bowles, the brother of Brian's girlfriend Judy.

Well he was never completely normal. His issues existed as far back as 1963 as far as putting on weight and not wanting to be on the road. Marilyn confirmed this to me saying that while he mostly had good days then, there were bad ones too.

I meant unscathed as a singer, or neurologically (no Landy meds), or that he could have regained a lot of his old personality.

Which interview in Phonograph are you referring to? What made it stand out to you?

Brian by 1974 was very overweight and had become addicted to drugs, but I still think it was Landy that really changed him. What we have today is remarkable considering what that man did to him.

If so you have what I have of Brian interviewed pre 1976. I think it was C-Man who said he was in touch with Jack so maybe ask him if Lloyd has anything? He has some great pictures of the Beach Boys-Brian in his book

Ummm... no. I'm thinking of this:

http://smileysmile.net/board/index.php/topic,4725.0.html
http://smileysmile.net/board/index.php/topic,10324.msg188232.html#msg188232

There was a link somewhere to a place where the story was told in much more detail, but I did not manage to find that.

I grabbed it from the Picture thread in the media section. (Took a while to find, but I knew it was in there). I believe the guess is that it was taken in LA in '74, being that he still looks fairly young & not quite as beat as he looked in '76.

yep..been posted in the media section under magazine scans for over a year. from bomp.....reply 121

Wow. Thanks for posting that. Looking very 15 Big Ones-ish http://i87.photobucket.com/albums/k154/dorphas/1976-77Bomp5.jpg

There's the one from Bomp, but I clearly remember another article with a small paragraph under that picture where it said that Brian came down to be interviewed by Pewter, possibly in his bathrobe. And I think during the caption (or beginning of the interview) where Pewter said that Brian had walked out when the subject of the Heroes (and maybe Good Vibrations) era came up. I have the clipping somewhere. Either from Bomp or Billboard or Rolling Stone. I remember a copy of this small blurb and picture provided the cover insert for the cassette making the rounds.

yeah..i remember that one mikie. the bomp one is the only one i had that survived....

Love his reaction when Pewter mentions The Beatles - 'GASP!'

Here is an interesting interview from (my guess) early 1970's talking about Good Vibrations:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtEt09-V90s

Is Brian stoned, blazing or what?  He's tripping all over himself.  He's too ramped up.  Sad.   :'(

Is this a joke?

It's from 1997 Brian didn't slur like this in the early seventies and had a smoother voice.

I think that was the last interview where he was that talkative. I mean, a year or 2 later you'd be lucky to get more than 2 consecutive sentences before having to move on to the next question

Good point.

Landy's work did some real damage to Brian, but there is lots of video throughout the 90s where Brian is quite articulate to the point where I'd suggest that there's more difference between, say this 1997 Brian and 2004 Brian and 1997 Brian and 1977 Brian. I might offer a theory: When Brian started to go out on tour more, he was being thrown way out of his comfort zone. This is not just a matter of being on stage but also having to be a far more social person, talking to both the press and the general crowd that surrounds the touring industry. In order to make it easier for him, I think he was probably trained, like a sports player might be, to give particular responses so that he wouldn't be thrown off when he got a question that he either didn't know how to respond to, or didn't know how to diplomatically respond in a media-friendly fashion. I think that very soon he got very comfortable with this training and it is difficult to find an interview after 2000 where he doesn't largely speak in cliches or using a highly rehearsed lingo.

I think too Carl's death had something to do with it.

One thing that stuck with me...I once read on this board that there's a (possibly apocryphal) story that relatively recently Brian was with some friends, just laughing and cutting up. Brian noticed a certain person came in, supposedly said something like 'Okay, time to go be "Brian Wilson" again' and immediately turn back into the Brian we're used to for the past decade.  I don't remember who posted that (or if it was even here), but that kind of stuck with me.

I remember reading that here too.

I don't recall reading that (would love to see the original thread if it was indeed posted here), but that's incredibly sad. Wonder if he puts on his current persona sometimes for personal amusement. Of course, he's entitled to act however he wants to act, but you'd love to see him open up and give more than monosybillac answers to certain interviewers and fans.

(in the 1997 interview posted above, he has a very Carl-like quality to him that you rarely hear during interviews).

I think he partly does it because he was burned by the media promoting how messed up he was.

Brian... people claim he's manipulated by those around him, and always has been, and that's undeniable, at times in the past. But, he's also no mean manipulator in his own right, and that includes the put-on. He's been doing it for years and he's damn good at it, be it for his own amusement or because he finds a given situation - say, interviews or a gathering where he really doesn't want to be - tedious. Partly defense mechanism, partly for the yucks. And the man has the most awesome poker face.

And of course, there are the bad days when it's not a put-on. That's the really sad thing.

Jim Pewter interview is awesome...

"Can you imagine writing Pet Sounds in a train station?"
 :lol

And for many years, it's been difficult to diferentiate whether he's on the up and up or if he's a put-on. The average Joe listening to or reading an interview (or the interviewer himself) can never really tell. Carl and Dennis Wilson use to say that Brian was the master at put-ons.

"What's your favorite Beach Boys album, Brian?"

I love how it starts out all high-energy.... but by the middle/end, the conversation has mellowed considerably, and the topic of discussion has shifted to 'dip' and 'fritos.'

He looks so weird on that photo with Pewter. His hair is parted on the opposite side from his normal

It wasn't that has just been printed backwards for many years. There are a few letters in the background that tipped me off.

Oh yeah, I mean that was obvious...he just looked weird. Didn't look like Brian that much, either before or after 1974. I guess what was weird was that he looked kinda like 15 BO Brian, but looked genuinely happy that day and 'normal', just...massive.